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Comments

That wasn't eloquent, nor did he explain what the movement is about. That was an unfocused, leftist rant with a stupid hat. I don't blame FOX News for not seeing fit to put that on air, although if they did, it would have played into the perception that OWS doesn't stand for anything in particular.

Orig Andrew is correct that Fox actually did OWS a favor by not putting a wannabe type that you would see spouting empty homilies on the air. IF I was OWS I would suspect that this dude was a disinformation agent designed to make our movement look bad.

Those of old enough to remember, know OWS is similar to the Vietnam War protests.

In the beginning, the corporate media completely ignored the protests. When they got bigger and became impossible to ignore, all the network news coverage (and this was long before FOX) focused on the pot-smoking and long hair and dirty hippies.

When thousands were arrested and 4 students were shot on a college campus in Ohio, the media message was that the unarmed students should have been smarter.

But in the end, it was those massive protests that stopped the war. It certainly wasn't the Nixon administrations idea. It wasn't the corporate media (Although Cronkite had the ball to speak up) and it wasn't that corner of corporate America that was making Billion$ on the war.

Sadly, even today, there are right win nut jobs, many in the media, who think we would have won the Vietnam war if it hadn't been for those dirty, long-haired, pot-smoking, free-sexing, fucking hippies.

When OWS grows to the point where the gummint can't ignore it and has to take action, nitwits like Andrew and PSB will pretend they were behind it all along.

how'd that work for President LBJ in 68?
You do realize, Itchy, that you are playing right into the hands of the Right.
Split the moderates via civil unrest.
Go ahead, get indulge your '60's fix' and see what happens.
Maybe this will mean another anti-war politico from Wisconsin will come to the primary ala Gene McCarthy in 68. 'Get clean for Gene' and all that eh?
Can you say Russ Feingold?

The rap on protestors at events like these is always that they're inarticulate and don't know anything about what they're protesting.

Like his perspective or not, you certainly can't claim that this guy is inarticulate. And his first point - that this is what we should have been talking about in 2008 instead of the insta-scandals and nonsense that have dominated most of our politics - is IMO inarguable.

Why does the right use 40+ year old analogies in which they assume the other side will fail? This protest is about money and who has it, not the drafting of 18 year olds going off to war. The protest involves more than young people out of work or veterans. Everyone is watching and has a stake in this unless you work for the 1% per-centers...

What I hear: complaints about the media, complaints about for profit healthcare, the birther movement, and Wall Street corruption. There's no agreement on what change needs to take place. I don't think they could gather enough support if they had but just one message, they can only get people out there if they cast a net wide enough to net a lot of discontent. Calling all angry liberals...

Although he did say one thing that was interesting "you ask why are the poor engaging in class warfare", that's probably the most recent "current event" that he made reference to. Everything else, Wall Stree, News Corp., health care reform, are old news. Maybe the talk of "class warfare" is what is creating this miniature Tea Party on the left.

I wish they were to become as succesful as the Tea Party has been, but whereas the Tea Party is unified behind hatred for the first black president, there is no equivalent boogeyman on the other side.

I don't care what they think, he's spouting rhetoric. He has no proof to back up his claims that the MSM works in concert with Wall Street to convince the punlic that free market capitalism will save us. He's sounds like another leftist loon. This attention he's getting has more to do with his caricature than anything he said.

40 year old analogies...
those who forget the past are likely to repeat it, pardoner.

go ahead and make the President and his administration ook weak and ineffectual by highlighting it via civil chaos.
like it or not, fair or unfair, people in the middle will hold the President responsible for the state of the economy.

I don't care what they think, he's spouting rhetoric. He has no proof to back up his claims that the MSM works in concert with Wall Street to convince the punlic that free market capitalism will save us. He's sounds like another leftist loon. This attention he's getting has more to do with his caricature than anything he said.

Posted by: The Original Andrew | October 05, 2011 at 11:40 AM

Orig Andrew 'gets it' in regards to the dude with the funny hat.
He is a characterture and useful in illustrating a slant that will not play in most of the country.
No doubt this fellow thinks himself smart/smug and scoring 'points' as if he is at the Student Union Bldg, but in the real world he just looks like he's out of touch with reality.

I've heard a few protestors complain that they can't get jobs. Finding a job is always tough when you're right out of college because you have no experience. We have no way of knowing why they haven't found a job. Have they been patient? Are they puting forth genuine effort?

If kids decide that the lack of a job it's not their fault, but it's everyone else's fault, then that could fuel a political movement. Republicans have been antoginistic with their cry of "class warfare" whenever anyone criticizes the rich for anything.

Interesting article. And some good advice for the OWS. Something tells me, however, that they're more from the self-expression generation and might not be capable of forwarding a solidified political movement. As a perfect example, Mr. LaGreca spent what could have been valuable airtime berating FOX News when he should have been focused on getting the OWS message out. His bad.

A slightly different take...well maybe not so different on "Occupy Wall Street"

Wall Street protesters scratch the surface

By Bill Wilson

If one has been following the news lately, it probably has been impossible to miss a nascent radical protest movement in New York City dubbed "Occupy Wall Street." On its face, it appears to be a typical leftist attempt to spark populist outrage against the supposed excesses of capitalism, and there may not be much more to it than that.

In short, it is an opportunity for youth to get out and vent against the weakened state of the economy, the financial crisis and the bailouts, and high unemployment — which the movement attributes to an amorphous Wall Street.

But, setting aside the circus-like atmosphere, as one delves slightly deeper into the group's literature, the protestors have at least correctly identified some of the villains behind today's depression: the international financial institutions.

This recognition was articulated by radical author Noam Chomsky, who voiced his support for the movement, writing, "Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street — financial institutions generally — has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power."

Chomsky's full statement drips with the use of Marxist language, but he has a point to make. Call it corporatism. Crony capitalism. Or corporate welfare. Whatever its label, there's no question banks possess an uncanny ability to leverage political institutions whenever something goes wrong.

It is evidenced by the 2008 and 2009 bailouts of financial institutions all over the world — the Federal Reserve printed over $442.7 billion to bail out foreign institutions that bet poorly on U.S. housing — and by Europe's ongoing rescue of creditors that lent money to socialist governments like Greece that could not afford to pay them back.

However, if the organizers of this movement were honest, they would realize that Wall Street's investment banks are merely bit players in this sordid affair.

If they were truthful, they'd be organized outside the Eccles Building in Washington, D.C. that houses the Federal Reserve. The real problem lays with the nation's central bank — and central banking institutions the world over.

In short, so long as banks can create money out of thin air through credit expansion — a process whereby institutions can lend and borrow multiples far beyond what they hold in capital, breeding obscene levels of leverage into the system (as much as $700 trillion in derivatives, according to the Bank of International Settlements) — the economy will continue to suffer this perpetual boom-to-bust cycle.

speaking of Fair and Balanced, over at Fox, CBS, ABC, CNN the whole Fast and Furious is morphing into a tremendous problem for AG Eric Holder. Turning into a 'what did he know and when did he know it' type of deal.
very interesting.

What kind of cruel bastards want to make life harder for the elderly? Slashing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, while we keep on funneling billions of dollars to dumb-ass wars whose purpose no one can actually define. Right now, what we call "the elderly" includes people who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It includes Americans who worked hard all their lives, but not at jobs that allowed them to stockpile millions of dollars. They've lived frugally, worked hard, and have loved and raised their families. One has to be either too young or too rich to be so insensitive to what living into one's old age actually means.

A Fox news reporter got a nightstick shoved in his stomach last night while trying to cover the protests on Wall Street.

here's some fair and balanced. when candidate obama ran, he was against it. now that he's in office as president, he's for it.
i guess the progressives feel this way as we see no protests. just remember, you may get another president in office who won't be to your taste.

check it out from huffpost.com (this is just a portion

"(Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder."

The "occupy movements" nationwide and the WTO protests of 1999 in Seattle.

The big common denominator is that this is bringing the anarchists out of the woodwork. Likely that more of these self-realized anarchists are paid off by the AFL-CIO, SEIU and splinter organizations financed by Mr. Soros, who is licking his chops.

“I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! … It is not a person’s fault if they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed.”

Herm Cain recently stood in front of a Tea Party gathering and asked; if any one was a racist, ‘identify yourself’. But no one did. So that shows Herm is a bold and confident leader and no one in the tea party is raciest.

"Tonight Bill Maher stood before a national TV audience and said "If you have to start a sentence with 'Im not a racist, but...' then you probably are."

Except Maher is too sanctimonious and one could say that he demonstrated he is a racist, because said he wasn't a racist. Don't do as I do, do as I say...

Like all of the others who support this "Occupy" exercise, he is evidently clueless about what his idea of an effective solution is because for him and most of the other clueless it's all about politics and their meme of defeating the evil-corporations with conservatives attached at the hip.

This is really what most of these kids are angry about, isn’t it? Most of them — except for the usual complement of old lefties and sundry off-their-meds street people — are, as many reporters have noted, college grads. One fellow interviewed last night on the Michael Medved radio show, for instance, was even a J.D. (Tellingly, he was not working in law — a symptom of the lawyer glut.)

They’re mad that they “can’t get jobs.” As Herman Cain points out, surely they can get some kind of job right now — just not in a trendy place like New York, Boston, or Seattle (cities where the Occupy movements have sprung up). In that time-honored Grapes of Wrath–esqe tradition, they could put Ma in the flatbed and set off cross-country to look for work. The job will probably be a low-paying one, and conservatives would do well not to sugarcoat this fact. Wages for entry-level and semi-skilled workers have barely budged in ten years. I credit this to employer’s wariness about hiring anyone at all. Hiring people (and all the litigation risks they present) is simply too risky unless that hire is obviously going to enhance the bottom line. Risks on the young and the untested are simply unacceptable in a tight economy tied down with regulation.

In short, if an Occupy Wall Street kid is ever inclined to look for work, the job he finds is not likely to be the groovy one he and his beleaguered parents envisioned when that $200,000 was shelled out for a four-year degree in poli-sci or women’s studies.

So, Occupy Wall Street kids, you’re right — there are some sleazy characters out there! But I wish you’d turn that laser of your rage on the educrats hiding behind their ivy-covered walls; the ones hawking the notion that without a four-year college degree, you’ll end up the gutter; the ones exploiting fear to sell a product that grows more expensive, and more shoddy, every year.

We haven’t had a bad enough economy to test this proposition in a while — an economy that forces employers to hire only the most essential workers — but what we are seeing these days is that a four-year liberal-arts degree is completely non-essential. "

Did everyone catch the Anti-War Protests yesterday? More is set for today.
Right now they are concentrating on the war in Afghanistan (Iraq is qiuckly winding down) and pushing for an end to that war. Yes!
Now, all the progressives that voted for Candidate Obama knew that Pres Obama ran in 2008 on the point that the war in Afghanistan was the 'good war' and folks should know if you voted for him you were voting for him to continue to prosecute that war. And he has kept his word. Still in for more war, Progressives?
Before we start to hear the usual Bush bash, he's gone. Since he's been gone we had for a number of years a Democratic Congress -veto proof- that didn't defund the Wars. A Democratic Administration with Pres Obama has shown no desire to wind it down in Afghanistan. Pres Obama is almost done with his 4 year term but it looks like we got more and more War.
How's that bumper sticker looking now, Sparky?

How about "Happiness in 2012 is Obama in your rear view mirror" ? However, it should be evident that Progressives don't care about unsustainable, with the exception of Green energy - which is contributing to making everything else in its wake unsustainable, that brings it back to the original premise - it is a Gordian Knot.

The rent-a-mobs, anarchists (not all from Eugene, OR) and the rest of the protesters are not protesting against the educrats, as PS's op-ed says. They may well be part of the root cause of this injustice that those are lashing out at. They think they mean well but a vast majority are clueless and look toward more government instead of less government control. There is a happy medium though & no easy answers.

although i will point out that i've seen many young people who finish college with a 4 year degree and $90k of debt in one of the soft majors and then are surprised that all they are qualified to do is teach English overseas or be the swing shift Barista.

math, science, business (accounting or finance--not that 'management' crap), and the like will get you a job. 15th century Italian Architecture or Asian Music Studies not so much. And a 4 year Poli Sci is just asking to guarantee you'll be living at home with your parents for years to come.

As you sometimes say PS 'spot on'. You are absolutely right; too many choosing college just to go to college thinking that the degree will get them in the door. Not any more! Degree's, unless like you say are 'somewhat' helpful but guarantee nothing unless they are in the hard science/math/engineering/computer field.

Googobs and googobs and googobs of money coming my way very soon........jus to so you know- as Randt Newman said ..." it's money that matters , in the U.S.A. ".......now that I've resurfaced we're all waiting for " the other shoe to drop"....

Like I told pBj...its obvious you dont understand this. Its ok..its not your issue, its not your movement. Mock away. While you and the majority of the media work overtime in attempts to de-ligitimize the feelings of a huge portion of this nation, we will proceed without you. These guys get it, however.

"Occupy Wall Street is spreading around the world. Protests are scheduled in London's financial district, Amsterdam and The Hague. Occupy The Hague is demanding attention for a gamut of economic and political problems."

It is probably more comforting to think this is just a bunch of dirty hippies who want their 15 minutes of fame.

"The Georgia congressman was introduced by the general assembly session at the Atlanta offspring of Occupy Wall Street. Lewis didn’t have enough time in his schedule to wait and left before his opportunity to speak came. But he didn’t have a problem with not getting special treatment."

People DID want to hear from him.
There was not a soul in that crowd that didn't want to give him a turn. He had things to do though, and couldn't wait.
It was great that he stopped by.

"According to Hood, namecalling, baiting other commenters by name, and "making blatantly off-topic posts" will be deleted, and if the commenter persists, they will be banned. He's calling on readers to apprise him of comments that offend. Hood, who suffers from presbyopia says he needs the assistance because, "The threads have become a cesspool that many have begged us to drain."

I followed your link PS, which took me to The Daily Caller, and the first sentence is "In a bizarre, cult-like process, “Occupy Atlanta” refused to allow Democratic Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights champion, an opportunity to address the crowd."

It is called a "human microphone"..the crowds are so big and there is no sound system. The person speaking says a couple of sentences and then the crowd repeats it so the people in the back can hear, like a verbal wave.

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